Work

Diagramming Program Values by Spatial Refinement

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Diagrams enable programmers to reason, debug, and communicate. However, constructing diagrams for programming language data is unnecessarily hard. We present a declarative DSL, Spytial , that captures the essential spatial features of data. We endow Spytial with a spatial semantics, mapping values to the 2D plane, and prove key properties. Spytial uses constraint-solving to make interactive renderings. We show how Spytial can be embedded in three very different languages: Python, Rust, and Pyret. We present a novel counterfactual debugging aid for diagramming errors, combining textual and visual output. We evaluate the language and system for expressiveness, performance, and diagnostic quality. Finally, we also show how Spytial can be used to construct values interactively and visually while preserving spatial constraints.

Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Authors: Siddhartha Prasad, Michael Tu, Karan Kashyap, Tim Nelson, Shriram Krishnamurthi

Institution: Brown University

Language: English

Topic: Logic, programming, and type systems

Subfield: Artificial Intelligence

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: National Science Foundation, Brown University

Awards: SHF: Small: Little Tricky Logics: Misconceptions in Understanding Logics and Formal Properties, Pedagogical Tools for Formal Methods

OpenAlex ID: W7163928710

FWCI:

Cites: 34

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